An Open Letter to the Makers of “Valtrex” (Glaxosmithkline)

Canyon-gazing. Schooner-sailing. Motorcycles. These are all things that herpes cannot prevent me from enjoying. Now sure, I don’t have herpes. But it’s very heartening to know that should I contract such a foul and persistent infection, your product will allow me to continue my outdoor adventures undaunted, my herpes adequately suppressed.

After all, it is about suppression—this much I’ve gathered from your prime-time commercials that seem to befuddle my twelve-year-old brother. “What is herpes?” he asks. “None of your business,” I say. And there is no cure for herpes—this you’ve made quite clear. You’re working on it, I know. No need to worry though, as I would, if I noticed new scenery amid my pubic region after a drunken romp with I-Can’t-Remember-Her-Name. You fine, upstanding men and women have invented the next best thing to a solution: a drug to suppress my potential outbreaks, limiting the hypothetical recurrence of my virulent and contagious genital sores to just a few manageable eruptions per year. For this, I thank you.

Employing the stall tactics of your product should be a daily and covert ritual for over sixty million Americans, many of whom I’m sure already label their Valtrex “Tylenol VD” whenever the opposite sex visits (because even with treatment, it may be possible to spread herpes to others_). As your hook-song writer so thoughtfully penned, I can now go on "_living the life I want." It goes without saying, of course, that the life a Valtrex user and I both want desperately is a life without herpes. However, I suppose “living the life you want, considering you have herpes” is too depressing and not nearly as effective a jingle. In any case, millions of people have the consolation of increasingly sporadic outbreaks thanks to the competent work of the good people at GlaxoSmithKline. Kudos.